Dragon fruit farm becomes spectacle with LED lights for additional light

The objective of the LED lighting is to get off-season yield, so the farmer installed one LED bulb on each and every pole, covering four sides of the plant

Sangareddy: Going innovative has been farmer Basvanthpur Ramesh Reddy’s hallmark. After tasting success with his dragon fruit cultivation initiative, Ramesh Reddy is once again drawing attention to his farm by installing hundreds of LED bulbs on the seven-acre dragon fruit farm at Ranzole village of Zaheerabad Mandal. The objective of the LED lighting is to get off-season yield.
Ramesh Reddy has installed one LED bulb on each and every pole, covering four sides of the plant. While he was getting 10-12 tonnes of yield per acre during the season, he is now getting 4 tonnes of yield per acre during off-season as well after this move.

Since the dragon fruit plant starts giving a yield in June normally, the yield starts going down by November. There is usually no dragon fruit yield from March to June. Ramesh Reddy, who completed his masters in New Zealand, but took to farming as a career in his native village, said dragon fruit lovers need to pay double the price from March to May even if they find any fruits during these months in the market.

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To exploit the opportunity and earn profits, Ramesh Reddy said he installed additional poles, electricity lines and LED bulbs by spending Rs 2 lakh on each acre. Since the dragon fruit needs nearly 12 hours of sunlight to start flowering, the plants will stop giving any fruits by November because the sun sets early and rises late during winter. To make up for this lack of light, he began giving four hours of additional light beginning in February and the crop started giving yield by mid-March.

 

Ramesh Reddy first tried the idea in a half-acre orchard a couple of years ago. He then expanded it to two acres last year and in a phased manner, covered the entire farm now. Though he gets just 25 percent of yield during off-season compared to the seasonal harvest, he said he would get double the price for his crop during off-season, leading to an increase of about 50 percent in overall profits.